


aftermath

by naruhoe



Series: by your side (i’ll be there) [4]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Royal Spymaster Daud (Dishonored)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-03-27 18:50:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13886982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naruhoe/pseuds/naruhoe
Summary: Daud and Corvo talk. Words are exchanged, and maybe some other things too.(Spymaster!Daud AU)





	1. interlude

In the aftermath of the attack, only one of the assailants survives, the one who caught a faceful of grenade from Alexi, surprisingly. Aside from the one Daud slaughtered, three had been breathing still when the city guard arrived and begin taking them into custody, but one went into convulsions on the transport to Coldridge, and the other followed before the guardsmen could be warned. Daud suspects poison capsules of the sort he and his men still carry. The third literally impales herself on a watchman's blade. The only attacker still breathing is in rough shape. Daud doesn’t know whether he’ll wake up or not. As a result, Daud is busy the rest of that afternoon and much of the night as well, and by the time Thomas begins humming and hawing the way he does when he wants Daud to get some rest, Daud is fed up enough to just ignore his second, continuing to pace the room like a caged tiger as he listens to Rinaldo's preliminary report. 

"Dismissed." He says tersely, brandishing the now-wrinkled report at Rinaldo, who looks about as worn as Daud feels, though without the ugly facial scarring. The information they've gleaned is about as much as Daud expected to find. Objectively speaking, it's something, but he isn't content- _won't_ be content until they've searched everything thrice over. Daud wants to know where, how, who, and even the illusive ‘why’. The door closes quietly behind Rinaldo. Daud hears his footsteps recede down the hallway and resists the urge to growl and punch a wall. It was far easier when he had just one job, one target, and two routes: entrance and escape. But that isn't the way it works now. Daud is not the man he once was, nor such a fool to believe that things could return to the way they were.

It's Thomas's hand that finally halts the furious scribbling of his pen, landing firmly atop the paper and drawing Daud's gaze to his second's concerned features. "You've done enough, sir. It's late." Thomas says in that earnest way of his, deep blue eyes filled with a confidence, a quiet self-assurance that Daud can't remember ever seeing before. With an indrawn breath that seems to rattle his chest, Daud uncurls his fingers, gloved still, from around the pen, unobservant to how it nearly rolls off the desk because he's busy straightening from the hunched-over position he'd adopted while standing at his desk. "Very well." Daud concedes, and enjoys the brief flash of surprise across his second's face before the other dips his sandy head (Daud doesn't miss the look of relieved acceptance, but says nothing about it.). "Goodnight, sir."

The door to his quarters is ajar when he arrives. Having graduated from weary to bone tired on the trip up the stairs, Daud's hand almost misses the pommel of his blade as he eases the door the rest of the way open, the other wrapping around the canister of choke dust attached to his belt. Daud's heart gives a disturbing palpitation as a familiar blue coat greets his eyes. Corvo continues to leaf through a small, dark volume he’s apparently lifted from the small shelf by the window. He still seems unaware of Daud's presence, and the Spymaster continues to hang in the shadow of the doorframe for a moment longer just watching Corvo, the relaxed lines of his body, the sheaf of dark hair that the Royal Protector hasn’t yet cut away from his face.

“Royal Protector.” Daud acknowledges in his gravely voice. He watches Corvo’s shoulders stiffen. He takes in the motion of him as Attano turns around warily, the book mysteriously reappearing on the shelf. Daud disregards it, placing his focus on Attano's newly revealed face instead. Daud waits politely, his heart twisting in his chest as Corvo seems to look him over. He doesn't know what _this_ is. Corvo has never before visited him in his quarters. There's no set precedent for behavior, and Corvo's face is carefully blank. It reveals nothing. This isn't anything like the other times, Daud can't help but feel.

His suspicions are proved true when Corvo gestures to the rickety table and chairs Daud remembers using all of two times. "We need to talk."


	2. aria

The thing about guilt- it gnaws at you. Like a pack of starving plague rats. Soon, there ain't nothing left. Or so Daud thinks. Sitting at the rickety wooden table across from Corvo Attano, he feels that guilt gnawing at him again. After Attano escaped Coldridge and the wanted posters went up, Daud had spent many a night studying the face of the man whose life he’d ruined.  Jessamine, too, whose likeness hung like an eternal reminder on the work board. (youkilledheryoukilledheryoukilledheryoukilledher-) The guilt had been worse, then, more like being consumed than gnawed at, and the truth was that when Corvo finally had come for him, Daud had already quietly resolved to accept the final steely kiss of the Lord Protector's blade at his throat.

Except, disarmed and alone amid the unconscious bodies of his men, he had been unwillingly spared. Unwillingly on both sides, Corvo obviously loath to spare Jessamine's killer, and Daud wrestling with the prospect of living with himself after it all. But Daud owed. Daud wasn't one to let his debts go unpaid; never had been, so looking into the anguished, burning eyes of the man he'd taken everything from, Daud had given himself fully to Corvo Attano. As his weapon, his scapegoat- whatever Corvo wanted him to be, he would be. And whatever Corvo needed from him, Daud would do.

Kingsparrow Island came first, and the standoff with Farley Havelock, who held a gun to Emily's head and proclaimed himself Emperor of the Isles, witnessed by the corpses of his fellow Loyalists. After that, in the turbulent next week that followed as Emily finally ascended the throne, Daud hadn't known what to expect. Public execution, maybe. The Royal Spymaster's uniform suddenly appearing on his cot one day, decidedly less so. Feeling Emily's eyes bore into his the next week as she officially named him her Spymaster in front of the rest of her council was, to date, still one of the most uncomfortable things he'd experienced in his lifetime. And then, the following night, when Corvo had ordered him to his knees for the first time in the quiet of the Royal Spymaster's office and left Daud with the imprint of his fingers bruised into the back of his neck.

"Emily told me of what you did today." Corvo says, at last. Daud, slouching cross-armed in his chair, resists the urge to tap his foot. He also resists the urge to ask Corvo why he's really here. Daud grunts noncommittally. Corvo's eyebrow ticks up for the briefest of seconds, then it is back to cool staring. "How many men?"

"Six. We're looking into the possibility that one or two may have gotten away." Daud says, short and succinct, knowing that Corvo has already read the report. Why is he here? 

"Ah." Corvo shifts slightly in his chair. Daud studies his face. The man has a scar on his left cheek that the likeness in his wanted poster does not have, a burn mark. Coldridge. Daud lies awake some nights wondering how things would have been if he had rescued Corvo from that godforsaken prison, if he had kept Emily out of the Pendleton's grasping hands, if only, if only... Used to be that Billy would be the one to distract him, coming in with a new mark and calling him an old man, but Billy is gone. Billy- it hurts to think about Billy, all these months later. Billy is on her own path, now, just as Daud is on his, alone with the silence. Thomas is a good kid, but he's only just learning to disobey Daud when Daud tells his Second he wants to be left alone, which leaves Daud with far too much time to himself.

"Did we lose any?" Corvo asks. If Daud didn't know any better, he might think that the Royal Protector looks downright uncomfortable. 

"No."

"Good."

 There's another moment of that awful, lingering silence, during which Daud's eyes move subtly between the sinfully comfortable four-poster bed that takes up most of the room and Attano's face. Daud's about to say something when the other's chair scrapes against the floor, Corvo standing abruptly and all too soon. There's a maddeningly familiar emotion in those dark eyes of his, but Daud can't quite figure it out. "I'll let you get some rest then." And then, the other's boots are thumping across the floor, and Daud stands too with the screech of wood scraping against the floorboards, and the words are out of him. "Why did you really come here, Lord Protector?" He demands. Corvo has a hand on the doorknob; Daud finally recognizes the look in the man's eyes as he catches the dark glimmer of an iris through Corvo's curtain of hair. It's guilt.

"You cannot be everywhere at once." Daud says, and he sees Corvo's shoulders go rigid beneath his coat. Catlike, as if not to startle the other, Daud steps silently out from between the table and his chair. "And blaming yourself for something you could not have prevented will only prove harmful-"

"This I know." Corvo interrupts, so tense that Daud can all but sense the stress emanating off of him. But Daud persists, taking another measured step forward as he repeats his question. "Why did you come here?" And how long had he been here, leafing through Daud's journals and staring out the window without promise that Daud would even return to his room that night? Corvo's shoulders rise and fall. Daud can no longer see the other's eyes, as his head has turned even further, fingers still wrapped around the doorknob. "Surely not to ask me the numbers again." Daud says, low and gravelly, as if talking to himself, but he continues advancing across the room until he stands no more than a foot away from Corvo's half-turned body.

So quietly that Daud has to strain to hear it, Corvo finally speaks, not moving from his position at the door. "What if you hadn't been with her today?" 

The question is so shockingly similar to what Daud finds himself asking late at night in the wake of his nightmares that Daud is silent for a long moment. "I was there." He says, at length, finally provoking a reaction from Corvo, who lets go of the doorknob as he spins around and takes an aggressive step forward, bringing the two of them so close that Daud can feel the body heat radiating off of him. Corvo is taller than Daud, annoyingly, a fact especially evident when the Royal Protector is looming over him. 

"But what if you weren't?" Attano demands aggressively. His eyes are intense, alight with the guilt. Daud holds his ground. There is nothing else to be done. 

"Then I expect you would have torn the Void asunder to reclaim her spirit from the black eyed bastard himself." Daud says dryly. Corvo looks totally nonplussed, the anger slowly fading from his handsome features. Daud could be wrong, then, but he thinks he sees Attano's lips twitch upwards before Corvo is suddenly surging into him, overwhelming Daud's senses with the heat of his skin and the musky scent of him as he presses Daud against the door.

Daud finds himself inexplicably pleased by the mass of him, the sheer solidity in the planes of Attano’s body. Flesh and bone and scarred muscle, all just like he remembered and somehow not at all like those paltry memories. Unable to help himself, Daud surges back, for once not passive as Attano's hair tickles his cheek and their mouths slot together. The kiss starts out dry and somewhat hesitant, as most kisses do, but by the end of it, both men are panting hotly into each other's mouths. Corvo has a handful of Daud's shirt, and Daud is much the same with a fistful of Attano's dark hair, the both of them leaning into one another like they've never experienced the horrid, grasping thing that is intimacy. Daud is pleased to see that the guilt that haunted Corvo's eyes is nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the update, much later than I'd intended. Sat down last night and hammered out the rough draft, and eventually got around to editing it today. Enjoy! Once again, I enjoy your comments so much!! Special thanks to my regulars who are always there with feedback for me- you guys are the best!


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